By the way, there is a new--and the best--edition {47b} of _Him_ coming out: edited by two men (Fellows) of Cambridge. Just the Text, with the various readings of Folio and Quartos: scarce any notes: but suggestions of Alteration from Pope, Theobald, Coleridge, etc., and--Spedding; who (as I told him twenty years ago) should have done the work these men are doing. He also says they are well doing about _half_ what is wanted to be done. He should--for he could--have done all; and one Frontispiece Portrait would have served for Author and Editor. Come--here is a long Letter--and (as I read it over) with more _Go_ than usually attends my old Pen now. Let it inspire you to answer: never mind _the Birds_:--which really suggests to me one of Dante's beautiful lines which made me _cry_ the other Day at Sea. Mentre che gli occhi per la fronda verde Ficcava io cosi, come far suole Chi dietro all' uccellin la vita perde, Lo piu che Padre mi dicea, etc. {48a} _To W. B. Donne_. MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE. _October_ 4/63. MY DEAR DONNE, Very rude of me not to have acknowledged your Tauchnitz {48b} before: but I have been almost living in my Ship ever since: and I supposed also that you were abroad in Norfolk. I pitied you undergoing those dreadful Oratorios: I never heard one that was not tiresome, and in part ludicrous. Such subjects are scarce fitted for Catgut. Even Magnus Handel--even Messiah. He (Handel) was a good old Pagan at heart, and (till he had to yield to the fashionable Piety of England) stuck to Opera, and Cantatas, such as Acis and Galatea, Milton's Penseroso, Alexander's Feast, etc., where he could revel and plunge and frolic without being tied down to Orthodoxy. And these are (to my mind) his really great works: these, and his Coronation Anthems, where Human Pomp is to be accompanied and illustrated Now for Tauchnitz; somehow, that which you sent me is not the thing: I don't like it half so well as my little Tauchnitz stereotype Sophocles of 1827. The Euripides you send bears date 1846: and is certainly not so clear to my eyes as 1827. Never mind: don't trouble yourself further: I shall light upon what I want one of these Days. It is wonderful how _The Sea_ brought up this Appetite for Greek: it likes to be called [Greek text] and [Greek text] better than the wretched word '_Sea_,' I am sure: and the Greeks (especially AEschylus--after Homer) are full of Seafaring Sounds and Allusions. I think the Murmur of the AEgean (if that is their Sea) wrought itself into their Language. How is it the Islandic (which I read is our Mother Tongue) was not more Poluphloisboi-ic?